


We're Picking Up the Pieces

by BatmanWhoLaughss



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Jake Peralta, Hurt/Comfort, Jake Peralta is Bad at Feelings, Whump, jake deals with his emotions finally, post-florida
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22875853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BatmanWhoLaughss/pseuds/BatmanWhoLaughss
Summary: He’s making his way back from the bar, refill in hand, when he hears them talking. “Oh, well, he hasn’t been around much. Things got complicated, and I haven’t seen him a lot.” He sees her avert her eyes, looking down at the floor. And he freezes, heart plummeting to the pit of his stomach.She wasn’t ever supposed to make excuses for him.Post-Florida. Jake finally deals.
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 6
Kudos: 177





	We're Picking Up the Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> I've read a lot of fics where Jake pours his heart out immediately upon coming home to Amy, but I feel like it would take a real smack in the face to force him to finally deal with all of his messy feelings about leaving Amy behind (cuz hella abandonment issues you guys!). So I wrote one. Plus, Amy loves this messy idiot a WHOLE HECKING LOT and we don't talk about it enough. 
> 
> Lemme know what you think! Kudos/comments are always appreciated. I've definitely got more ideas for prompts like this (post prison fic incoming?!?!?) so feedback is life. Enjoy!

Jake has been back in Brooklyn for two weeks, hobbling around on his still-recovering leg and getting generally antsy. Six months in Florida was a long time to be away, and he’s still settling into things. Amy had changed the curtains in her apartment, there are _three_ new coffee shops within walking distance of his place (he’d tried them all, and they all sucked), and Ava is almost a year old, and growing fast. He finds himself reflexively reaching for his badge where it used to hang around his neck, but he won’t get that back for another week and a half. 

But even though he’s regularly fighting the urge to hurl his cane across the room and start chasing bad guys again, he is happier than he can remember being in a long time. He’s _home_ again, back with the people he loves. His stupidly smart, stupidly hot girlfriend fought through hell to bring him home, and they’re more in sync than ever. He can kiss her whenever he wants and fall asleep with her in his arms every night, and he never wants to be apart from her ever again.

She’d told him all about her life during his time away, admitting that she hadn’t done much. She’d been so wrapped up in the Figgis case, she’d said, and enjoying herself without him had just felt wrong. He’d just held her, kissed her head while she’d cried, and felt cold all over. 

He still hasn’t talked much about those six months. Amy had asked him about it a few times, about how he’d handled it, what he did, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her. Every time, he’d averted his eyes so she wouldn’t see unshed tears, and told her how much he missed her with a shaky voice, and somehow she knew he just wasn’t ready. She isn’t pushing him, and he’s grateful, but he can tell she wants to know, and even though she keeps telling him that it’s okay, that he can tell her when he’s ready, he feels bad. No matter how he tries, every time he wants to talk to her about it the words won’t come. 

Jake knows he has to tell her eventually, about how he spent days sitting in an empty house drinking cheap, warm beer and crying in hot tubs and picturing the way her pristinely pressed blouses clung in all the right places. Logically, he knows she’d been just as miserable as he had, but somehow he just can’t _tell her_ about it. Sometimes, he thinks he can detect a hint of sadness in her voice, like she thinks he didn’t miss her at all, and he’s never hated his stupid brain more. 

It’s a Friday afternoon. Amy’s curled up next to him on the couch, her head on his shoulder and his fingers curled up in hers. He presses his lips to the top of her head (because it’s been 5 minutes since the last time he kissed her and that’s too damn _long_ ), and she sighs softly. Her other hand is aimlessly tracing patterns along the length of his arm, and even though it tickles a bit, it makes him feel warmer than ever in the slightly chilly air of his apartment. 

Amy looks up at him. “Wanna go to Shaw’s tonight?” She says it quietly, squeezing his hand as she did. “A friend of mine from the 73 is going to be there, and she’s been dying to meet you for ages now.”

“Oh?” Jake doesn’t recall her mentioning it before. 

Amy looks down at their hands, still locked together. “Yeah. She asked a bunch while you were gone.” She looks back up at him, and he can see the sadness and slight trepidation on her face. “I kept dodging her because I couldn’t tell her the truth, but it might be fun.” 

“Oh. Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool.” His voice sounds hollow. _I missed so much._ He shuts his eyes, picturing Amy’s apologetic face as she’d told people he couldn’t come, that he was away, and trying to stop his stomach from churning uncontrollably. _I wasn’t there. I should have been there. I… “_ Yeah, that sounds fun.” He smiles at her, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. 

Amy’s watching him with wary eyes, and he hopes she can’t read his thoughts in his expression. She knows him too well, though, and she can tell something’s off. “We don’t have to. We can stay in and watch _Property Brothers_ reruns, or-”

“No! No, it’s okay. Drinks sounds… nice.” He tries to inject some cheer into his voice, burying the voice in the back of his head yelling that _he left, he left and he shouldn’t have, she was alone because of him._ “I’ll get changed.”

She’s still watching him with a thoughtful expression, and he can almost _see_ her mentally filing away his reactions for later. But she smiles wide, and Jake feels a tiny bit warmer. “Great! I’ll text her.”

Jake smirks. “I’m about to rock her world with my trademark Peralta charm. She won’t know what hit her.” 

He feels a pillow collide with the back of his head as Amy laughs from the couch, and the nagging whisper in his head fades as he feels his heart swell.

They make it to Shaw’s a little after 7. Jake drives, singing loudly to Taylor Swift while Amy rolls her eyes at him, and things start to feel almost normal again. The anxiety in the pit of his stomach is almost gone now, and as they walk into the familiar chaos of their favorite bar, Jake admits to himself he could really use a drink. They order quickly, his arm around Amy’s shoulder, and as they grab their beers, Amy waves brightly to someone.

“Mary! Over here!”

“Amy!” A tall, brunette woman makes her way over to them from across the bar. “So great to see you!”

“Same here, it’s been a while! How’ve you been? Oh, Mary, this is Jake Peralta, my boyfriend.”

“So _you’re_ the famous Jake.” She smiles, shaking his hand, but staring him down in a way Jake isn’t sure he likes. “Heard a lot about you. Amy kept dodging my invites on account of you being away.”

His stomach starts churning again. “Right. Yeah, I had to leave for a while. Undercover stuff, you know the drill.” He’s still not supposed to talk about his time in WITSEC to people who weren’t involved, but the tightness in his chest returns. _Got a few flights in a row. Probably won’t be back for a couple weeks. Work stuff, you know. You understand, right?_

Mary shrugs. “Well, I’m glad we’re finally meeting anyway. Lord knows Amy’s talked my ear off about you by now.” Jake can see a blush start to form on Amy’s cheeks as she takes a swig of her beer, but she has a thoughtful look in her eyes as she watches him. He hopes his smile is convincing.

“Oh I bet. I’m the cool one.” He smirks, taking another drink, but Amy can tell he’s distracted. “I’m empty,” he mutters. “Be right back, going for a refill.” He walks quickly to the bar, needing a break, his father’s words still echoing in his head. He hates that they sound so similar to his own.

Amy watches Jake leave with a slight frown on her face. Something’s been eating at him all afternoon, and she doesn’t want to push him, but she’s worried. He still hasn’t said much about his time away, and she knows he is still hurting. Holt had let it slip one day that Jake hadn’t handled being in WITSEC well, and even though every instinct in her body has been urging her to press him about it, she keeps telling herself he’ll talk when he’s ready. She can usually read him like a book, but she can’t tell what he’s thinking today. And that kind of freaks her out.

“So. Mary says as they watch Jake leave. “That’s the guy? The one you never shut up about?”

Amy smiles. “That’s the one. He’s pretty great.”

“Lately all you ever told me was that he’s been gone all the time.”

Amy frowns. “What do you mean?”

Mary shrugs again. “I mean, someone that’s never around isn’t a great guy to be with.”

“Jake’s amazing to be with. He’s smart, he makes me laugh… I’ve never felt more loved by anyone in my life. It wasn’t his choice to leave. It wrecked him, but he had to go.”

Mary gives her a sympathetic look. “That’s what they all say, girl. Then they leave one day and never come back.”

Amy watches Jake’s back as he waits for his drink. He turns around briefly, catches her eye and grins, and Amy feels herself blush as the _normalcy_ of it all washes over her. She’d missed him like _crazy_ while he’d been gone, and she’s still shocked that something as simple as a smile can reduce her to a puddle of mush in an instant. But, as what Mary said registers, her brows furrow. “Jake’s not like that. Not at all.” Her voice has a sharp edge to it. “Things got… complicated, and I haven’t seen him a lot. That’s all.” She looks down at the floor, a familiar lump rising in her throat just like it always does when she thinks about their forced separation. Figgis is gone, but the echoes of those six months apart still sting. “He was in danger. Someone wanted him dead, so he had to leave for his own safety, and mine. Believe me, he would _never_ have done it voluntarily.”

Mary looks visibly shocked. “Oh man. I didn’t know it was like _that._ I’m sorry I said anything.” She puts her hand on Amy’s arm. “I’m glad he’s back safe. You seem way happier now than you did the last couple times we talked.”

Amy smiles. “Oh, I am. I really am.”

Jake’s making his way back from the bar, refill in hand, when he hears them talking. “Things got complicated, and I haven’t seen him a lot, that’s all.” He sees her avert her eyes, looking down at the floor with a sad look on her face. And he freezes, heart plummeting to the pit of his stomach and every nagging thought about how he’d abandoned her hitting him full in the face. The hand holding his beer involuntarily clenches, to the point he thinks he’ll break the bottle.

She wasn’t _ever_ supposed to make excuses for him. Not ever.

It’s the one thing he’d sworn to himself once they started dating. He’d promised himself that he would never leave her, that she would never be forced to cover for him to friends and family, that he wouldn’t turn into his dad. Now, she’s doing exactly that, trying to justify his absence to an old friend, and everything _hurts_ and Jake thinks he might be dying as his heart shatters into a million tiny pieces. He feels his eyes watering, and he’s moving before he realizes he is, slamming his bottle down on a random table and all but running out of the bar. He thinks he might be crying, but he doesn’t know or care. All he can hear is a steady stream of _you left, you left, you left her, you abandoned her, you left her alone, just like you promised you wouldn’t._

 _She deserves better,_ he thinks. He _abandoned_ the one person he loved more than anything in the world, and all the self-hatred, all the fear, anger, and sadness that he’d buried since he got back from WITSEC is coming to a head uncontrollably right in the middle of this crowded bar.

He thinks he might make it to the Nine Nine, the familiar atmosphere of the bullpen blurry through his tears. He thinks a beat cop might call his name, but he doesn’t respond as he makes a beeline for the evidence locker. Heaving sobs wrack his frame as he curls up in front of a stack of cocaine and puts his head between his knees. Feelings are coursing through him like tidal waves, and he’s unable to stop them as he lets himself cry. _I’m sorry Amy. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry._ It’s messy and involuntary and uncontrollable, and Jake thinks he can hear knocking on the door, but he doesn’t care.

He’d broken his promise, and even though he’d spent six months dreaming about being back home, he’s never felt worse.

Amy finds him at the Nine Nine, after getting a call from Dave at the night reception desk. He’s hunched over in front of a pile of cocaine from that drug bust the week before, breathing heavily as he sobs. She kneels next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder tentatively as he blinks up at her, tears still streaming down his face. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask him what’s wrong, or why he ran. He opens his mouth to say something—probably to apologize for leaving, which is such an utterly _Jake_ thing to do while he’s crying on the evidence room floor. Before he can, she’s shushing him, pulling him to her and pressing her lips to the top of his head. He wraps his arms around her in a vice-like grip and buries his face in the crook of her neck, his frame still trembling.

Amy lets him cry into her shoulder, adjusting their position so that they’re sitting side by side, his head on her chest and his arm slung around her waist. She has one arm wrapped around him, while the other slowly strokes his hair, and Jake can feel the sobs starting to taper off. She’s muttering quiet assurances in his ear. “Jake, _Jake,_ it’s okay babe, you’re allright…” She says whatever pops into her head, anything she can think of to piece the man she loves back together again. Slowly, she feels him start to relax, the tears drying and his heartbeat starting to return to normal. “Jake, breathe with me okay? Slowly. In and out. C’mon babe, you’re doing great.” She presses her lips to his cheek, his jaw, the top of his head, any part of him she can reach.

Jake takes a couple of shuddering breaths before reaching for her hand to intertwine his fingers with hers. “-‘m sorry Ames.” He’s so quiet Amy can barely hear him. “I’m sorry.”

Her heartbeat speeds up even further. “Jake, it’s okay. It’s all okay.” She squeezes his hand, hoping that her voice sounds soothing despite the anxiety coursing through her. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”

He takes another shaky breath, looking down at their hands where they were locked together. “Florida.” It’s all he says, and Amy thinks he’ll elaborate, but he doesn’t, and his lip starts trembling again.

She tilts his face up to look him in the eye. “Florida? Jake, you’re home. Figgis is gone. It’s in the past.” She thinks this will calm him down, but he has an almost frantic look in his eyes as he opens his mouth to speak again.

“Ames… I left. I _ran,_ I left you alone, and I promised I wouldn’t.”

And it all clicks for her, falling into place in a heartbeat. Jake’s subdued tone whenever someone brings up the things he missed, how he conveniently leaves the room every time someone mentions him being away… in hindsight, Amy should have put the pieces together a long time ago.

“Jake.” Her voice is firm, but warm, and she hopes beyond hope that what she’s about to say will make it through the thick wall of guilt and abandonment issues she imagines is swirling through his head. “Jake, look at me.” He’s wary, but he meets her eyes. “You did _not_ abandon me, okay? Don’t you ever think that for a second.”

“But I…”

“No buts. You were _forced_ to leave, against your will, and you’ve _never_ abandoned anything in your life.” His eyes are still sad, but she can tell she was starting to get through to him. “I don’t blame you for leaving. I never have, and I never will. Okay?”

“You don’t hate me for going?” The vulnerability is clear as day in his voice, though he does his best to hide it.

“Of course not. I love you, you idiot.”

She presses her lips to his then, and Jake feels warmth spread through him like wildfire. He kisses her back, feeling the weight of her words in the way she holds him, one hand on the back of his head and the other in his where he grips it like a lifeline. When he pulls back, he rests his forehead against hers, an apology already forming as he opens his mouth. She presses her index finger to his lips before he can say it, a knowing glint in her eyes. _God,_ she knows him so well. “I love you too, Ames. _So_ much.”

And then before he knows it, he’s talking, words gushing out of him faster than he can piece his thoughts together. He tells her _everything,_ about Florida, about every ugly, depressing thought he had while he was away. He tells her about the hot tub burritos, about afternoons spent day drinking until he passed out, about the time he’d cried for 3 hours after he saw a woman wearing Amy’s favorite blouse. He talks about the time Holt taught him how to play Monopoly, but he couldn’t enjoy it because she wasn’t there, and about all the times he stalked Gina’s social media just to catch any tiny glimpse of life at the Nine Nine.

He tells her about every horrible moment of self-loathing, and there are times when he thinks she’s going to stop him, or get up and leave, or hell, call a doctor, but she doesn’t. She does what Amy does best. She sits, and she listens, and she lets him pour his broken heart out on the precinct floor, as if she knows how much he _needs this_ , needs to get it all out in the open and out of his head. Her hand never leaves his the entire time, and she guides his head down onto her shoulder again as he talks himself hoarse.

And at the end of it all, she still doesn’t say anything, but she’s got tears running down her face. Jake itches to kiss them away, but his eyes are drooping and he feels lighter than he has in months, as if a giant weight has been lifted off his shoulders, and he’s about to fall asleep right there in the evidence room. He mumbles a thank you, so quietly that he doesn’t think Amy hears him, but she plants a feather-light kiss to the top of his head and tightens her hold on him as he drifts off.

Tomorrow, they’ll talk some more, curled up on their comfortable couch as Amy will talk him through all his messy emotions, and Jake will do his best to help Amy with hers. They’ll go home eventually, and Amy will wordlessly curl up behind him just the way he likes as they fall asleep. But for now, she holds him on the floor of the Nine Nine as he dozes off to the steady thumping of her heart, and Jake thinks something in him is _finally_ starting to heal.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so, who doesn't love a good old fashioned breakdown on the evidence room floor?


End file.
